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Big electric motor

Working at a aluminum rolling mill the past few weeks on fall outage PMs. For the most part we work on the chillers and air handlers for motor and motor room cooling. Last week they did a tear down on 2 out of 3 of the finishing mill motors. One of the armatures was pulled for offsite work. They have special cradles with enclosures for motor part moving and storage. The armature alone weighed 60,000 lb. with cradle enclosure the weight was just shy of 90,000lb. It was disassembled, worked on, parts trucked out, parts trucked back, reassembled and rolling aluminum in one week
Today they rolled an even bigger motor in for a different mill. 153,000lb armature with 193,000lb. cradle/armature weight. Makes me feel like I'm playing with a tonka truck in the sandbox while the kids next door are playing with haul-trucks in a strip-mine.

You don't know how bad I wanted to take one! This mill is so clean, nice, helpful, and gives us so much work. I would be a sad guy if I stood out in the open and snapped a pic and got in trouble. The shaft size is probably about the diameter of a drum if that helps haha.
About the only picture I have is of a air handler bearing.(which is more disappointing) It has a 200hp motor driving it via poly chain at a 1:1 ratio. They use two of the air handlers twined with two 250 ton RTAC tranes to keep the motors happy.
The auto greaser is not on it but the vibration sensors are. You can tell they like to be preventative.

Here is a lightweight motor room there. The closest motor is 1500hp coupled to another one just to the left out of sight.
In the background is two 5000hp motors coupled together. You can see their chilled water piping to their coils directly on top of them. The motor air recirculated inside themselves. They are sealed tight during operation. You can watch the chilled water temp and see how hard they are running.
They were running their chilled water temp so high they were on the edge of making the chillers take a dump. Thankfully they added some bypass valves, 8000 gal tank, and a bigger chiller than the current three combined. They do not like to slow down for hot motors and they want to push them to 120% all summer with no worries.

Being in this industry often reminds me of just what it takes to keep this country going, day to day. Most people have no idea. Those two 5000hp motors being enclosed like that reminds me of motor-generator sets.

Being in this industry often reminds me of just what it takes to keep this country going, day to day. Most people have no idea. Those two 5000hp motors being enclosed like that reminds me of motor-generator sets.

Hard to believe and these are the small ones. All this is here running wide open no expenses spared to maintain continuous production so Americans can crack open a cold one.

Yes it does. I started in the industrial and institutional side of the industry. In the late 80's and early 90's when there was a sharp downturn in manufacturing, I got tired of less than 40 hour weeks, and took a job with a light commercial and residential service company. I was scared to death that I was gonna break something. Everything suddenly looked so small. Thanks for the pics and the trip down memory lane.